REVERSE TRANSCRIPTION
- a matter of black and white?
by Arthur Butterworth
Although a term well-known
to bio-scientists, the expression has
its own very different musical meaning.
It was remarked in this column a few
years ago - July 2001 - that, throughout
musical history, much original music
has been subject to all manner of re-arrangement
and transcription according to the whim
of later musicians. Purists, of course,
generally object to this, believing
that an original work of art is sacrosanct
and ought never to be tampered with.
The point was made that transcriptions
nevertheless serve a useful purpose
in making a work more widely available
when the original might not have been,
orchestrating for a variety of other
combinations of instruments music perhaps
originally intended for the piano. This
generally implies expanding the texture
of music that otherwise had to be confined
to what one pair of hands might conveniently
manage to play at the keyboard. It offers
all sorts of imaginative opportunities
to explore timbre, increasing
the sheer volume of sound and perhaps
most of all to give many others the
satisfaction of taking part in a performance
which would otherwise be the exclusive
preserve of just a privileged few.
To an arranger or transcriber
(the two functions are not exactly alike)
the prospects of expanding some other
composer’s original ideas are full of
exciting and challenging possibilities,
and in a sense easier than having to
think up something of one’s own. The
material is already there, its structure,
melody, harmony and overall texture
ready-made; like the child’s black and
white, outline picture book; all it
needs is to colour the blank spaces
between the outlines provided ... but
this is hardly original art. However
transcription, and perhaps even more
so ‘arranging’ (which usually implies
being free to do something different
than remaining faithful to the original
design) is never quite so straightforward;
some invention is required to fill out
a slender original, expand and convert
it into a more colourful piece of musical
architecture. No matter how much it
might be objected to in principle, the
idea and the practice of taking someone
else’s creation and altering it - defacing
it in the purist’s opinion - has been
almost universal.
One kind of transcription
has been of particular practical use:
that of making piano versions of large-scale
vocal works: opera, oratorio, and such
music that originally called for a large
orchestra to accompany singers or instrumental
soloists. In order to get to know their
solo roles solo performers have always
needed to have a piano reduction of
the full score so that they can have
an accompaniment in the early stages
of learning their part. These workaday
piano reductions, by their very nature,
are generally only an outline of the
essentials of the accompaniment. It
is not practicable to cram into the
space that can accommodate two hands
at the keyboard all the richness and
multifarious subtle detail that the
full orchestra is able to provide. A
compromise has to be made: this is the
very opposite situation of transcribing
a keyboard work for a large orchestra
or band, where the requirement is to
expand - and maybe enrich - the original.
Now the requirement is to condense a
fulsome score to the slimmed-down essentials
of melody, harmony and rhythm. Very
often subsidiary themes: counterpoints,
which might be quite interesting in
themselves have to be omitted; there
is no room for them within the scope
of one pair of hands.
There is a better chance
with four hands at the keyboard instead
of two. Slimming-down a score becomes
considerably more a problem than expanding
it. It is a simple parallel with moving
into a bigger house: there is more room
for the multitude of one’s possessions,
nothing need be discarded, this is akin
to orchestration; there are enough instruments
to take care of every strand of the
original score. On the other hand moving
into a smaller house requires one to
be selective and throw out things that
are not absolutely essential; in the
same way reducing the full score to
the piano means that some of the less
essential counter-melodies have to be
left out.
Most traditional vocal
scores, the publications that are meant
to assist vocalist in learning their
parts, have generally been in the prosaic
phrase: "workmanlike"; in
other words they serve a purpose if
not always a very artistic one in terms
of keyboard idiom. Concert pianists
familiar with performing the great solo
works of Schumann, Brahms or Chopin
can hardly expect to find much of satisfying
idiomatic keyboard style in a vocal
score of Wagner or Verdi. Before the
development of recording and the availability
of well-nigh perfect CDs, it used to
be the common way of getting to know
the classical symphonies by playing
them in piano transcriptions, either
for one player or for two playing as
duettists, perhaps less frequently in
transcriptions for two pianos, where
of course much more variety of texture
could be put in. Purists did not object
to the piano being used to make the
classics better known in this way. The
objection has really been on idealistic
grounds. Why make a transcription when
performances of the original are now
widely available ?
The ethics of making
transcriptions from orchestral scores
for brass or wind band has been much
debated. Making orchestral transcriptions
from an original brass band work has
only rarely been considered worthwhile,
but there have been some notable exceptions:
Elgar’s original brass band work, "The
Severn Suite" has been re-scored
for wind band, and for large orchestra,
and is also known as the composer’s
"2nd Organ Sonata". Holst’s
"A Moorside Suite" is also
available as a wind band piece as well
as in a full orchestral version. Holst’s
"Hammersmith Prelude and Scherzo"
originally written in the 1930s for
the then BBC Wireless Military Band
became far more familiar in its full
orchestral guise.
What of transcribing
such works for the piano?
The same kind of problems
arise as in re-casting an orchestral
score: Can the brass idiom be satisfactorily
re-cast in terms of the keyboard, or
is it inevitable that something has
to be omitted to make it playable?
The problem is vividly
demonstrated in the case of the solo
piano version of the Brahms "Academic
Festival Overture". It is interesting
to compare two widely differing situations
regarding this major orchestral work.
When it was transcribed by Denis Wright
in 1937 for a major brass band contest,
there were severe limitations as to
what the brass band was capable of representing:
the enormously exciting, flamboyant
string passages had to be jettisoned
completely since there were just not
enough instruments - 24 brass players
- to accommodate all of Brahms’ complex
counter-melodies originally shared-out
between an orchestra of over seventy
players, including the basic string
band, a large wood-wind ensemble and
a complement of horns, trumpets and
trombones along with a percussion section.
The brass band of 1937 was not allowed
to use any percussion at contests so
that Brahms’s essential timpani part
had to be fudged on the E-flat bass
- hardly a satisfactory arrangement.
The two-handed piano
version made in 1882 by Robert Keller,
Brahms’s regular copyist, in the employ
of Simrock the publisher, caused some
misgivings on Brahms’ part: ........
"Keller is a splendid man and does
everything so diligently and properly
that he cannot be faulted. But I do
need to tell you that a two-hand arrangement
by him reveals the philistine, and that
it could be of no interest to a player
with any sophistication" ... The
implication being that Keller’s transcription
was too awkward and likely to put off
those who might like to try it at the
keyboard. Keller’s two-handed piano
score is well-nigh impractical even
to a virtuoso pianist, let alone the
‘average’ accomplished amateur. It tries
to include every instrumental nuance
and inessential decoration in the string
parts, is not pianistic and attempts
to play it sound laboured and crude.
It could have been much simplified and
would thus sound far more effective
as a representation of Brahms’ original
score.
These two widely different
realisations of a major orchestral work
demonstrate just how difficult it is
to make a convincing and wholly satisfactory
"transcription in reverse":
reducing rather than expanding a composer’s
original creation.
© Arthur Butterworth
October 2004
